Ten Top Tips to Free SEO

Search Engine Optimisation is promoted as a dark, mysterious and expensive art to coax Google nirvana. In reality, there are lots of simple steps you can take for free to increase your ranking position.

1. Don't believe false promises.

We've lost count of the number of times someone has phoned us up and promised that they have insider knowledge of Google's systems and guarantee to get us to the top of the listings. There are only two surefire was to guarantee to get to the top:

• Pay to advertise there. Which can be expensive.
• Put some weird gibberish text on your website, then search Google for exactly that same gibberish. You'll get to the top alright, but it's not really much use, is it?

So save your money, and do it yourself.

2. Read Google's guidelines

Google want your site to be found. So much so, that they've written guidelines on getting the best position. And it's free. Click here to read it.

3. Get good quality links to your site

Getting good quality websites, which are appropriate to your website, to link to you can greatly increase your PageRank. Avoid "link farms", which are just websites stuffed with links to other websites. Your PageRank can actually be penalised for this. 

4. Get good quality links from your site.

Return the favour from point 3. Search engines like to find links to other websites. What makes them happy can make you happy.

5. Update your site frequently

The more you update your website, the more frequently the search engines will return, and the more likely that your position will benefit.

6. Register on DMOZ

DMOZ is a human-compiled database of websites. It's free and easy to submit your website, but it can take a very long time to be accepted.

7. Increase the size of your site

We've found that the more pages your website has, the better its position should be. We believe that the reason for this is two-fold:

• The more pages there are, the more text the search engines can read.
• Bigger sites are seen as being more importance

Don't just create lots of pages for the sake of it though. There has to be appropriate, keyword laiden, text there!

8. Give your web pages human-friendly names

People search for words, so that's what search engines look for. Don't give your webpages filenames like www.yoursite.com/product_info.php?products_id=52&osCsid=f9547f2e0506, use www.yoursite.com/red-handbag instead.

9. Keywords

Yes, we know that keywords are important, but don't overdo it. Just write your text to be enticing to human readers, and the search engines will follow.

10. Don't try to cheat!

You might think it's clever to cram a hundred keywords into an image's ALT tag, have loads of text in white at the bottom of your homepage, or any one of the many many other cheats which have been tried over the years, but the search engines are wise to these "black hat" tricks. If you get caught, your website can be completely banned from Google and other search engines. Don't risk your business this way!

Still need help?

Pragmatic Design helps businesses of all sizes to improve their web presence, via SEO and online and offline marketing, Give us a call on 01902 58 10 12 or email us at info@pragmaticdesign.co.uk for a no-obligation chat.